"When you're dancing with Mother Nature, she leads," Bailey says. "If you have really good, positive goals for yourself that make sense, then you're a lot better mentally prepared to handle what the weather throws at you. Then your success or failure isn't based on something out of your control."
During last year's Yukon Quest, Bailey, a rookie, had to decide whether to push on when the temperature dropped below minus 50.
"I could've gotten sucked into a bad attitude or bad goals," Bailey says. "I could've chosen to be too pushy or to accomplish something unrealistic." Instead, Bailey looked at the mushers beside her and realized it wasn't really important to her whether or not she beat them or they beat her. "What was important was learning as much as I could and getting a healthy team to the finish line, because I was a rookie," she says.
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